Day 17 - My Limbs Are Made Glorious

Stream Of Life

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth
in numberless blades of grass
and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth
and of death, in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.

-Rabindranath Tagore

Day 16 - The Roots of our Landscape

Coastal Plain

The only clouds
forming are crow clouds,

the only shade, oaks
bound together in a tangle of oak

limbs that signal the wind
coming, if there is any wind

stroking the flat
fields, the flat

swatch of corn.
Far as anyone’s eye can see, corn’s

dying under the sky
that repeats itself either as sky

or as water
that won’t remain water

for long on the highway: its shimmer
is merely the shimmer

of one more illusion that yields
to our crossing as we ourselves yield

to our lives, to the roots
of our landscape. Pull up the roots

and what do we see but the night
soil of dream, the night

soil of what we call
home. Home that calls

and calls
and calls.

-Kathryn Stripling Byer

Day 15 - What Will Survive Of Us Is Love

An Arundel Tomb

Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd—
The little dogs under their feet.

Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor’s sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.

They would not guess how early in
Their supine On their backs stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly they

Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the glass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,

Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.


-Philip Larkin

Day 14 - Your Dream-Ladder to Divinity

Everything is Waiting for You

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

-David Whyte

Day 13 - A New Voice

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

-Mary Oliver

Day 12 - Did You Feel It In Your Heart?

The Swan

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

-Mary Oliver

Day 11 - So As Not To Be The Martyred Slaves of Time

Be Drunk

You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it—it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.

-Charles Baudelaire

Day 10 - The Time of Seeing

Slow Waltz Through Inflatable Landscape

At the time of his seeing a hole opened—a pocket opened—
and left a space. A string of numbers plummeted
through it. They were cold numbers.
They were pearls.

And though they were cold the light they cast was warm,
and though they were pearls he thought they were eyes.
They blinked. He blinked back.
Anything that blinks

must be friendly, he thought, until he saw the code
—a string of numbers—carved into their sides
and grew afraid. He tried to close
the space

but it was no longer his own. He tried to close his eyes
but they were no longer his. He tried to close
his mouth, his hands, his ears
but they were no longer

his, were never his to begin with: this was the time of his seeing.
The world opened. A line began. A tree grew above him
and he thanked it. A sun dawned over the line
and he thanked it.

A building unfolded abruptly and blocked the sun
and he put his hand on its side and thanked it
for the shade, he put his hand
on the sidewalk

and gave thanks to the cement—it was cool and wet and
took the shape of his hand into it—he put his eyes
at the feet of a woman
and she lifted them,

to her own, and he thanked her, from the inside, and she understood.
Wires swirled above him, straightened out along an avenue
and the lights came on. One moon rose.
A second moon

rose on the windshield of a car and he thanked them both.
This was the time of his seeing. This was the time.
An electric green beetle shuttled out
of the darkness

and landed on his forearm, pulsing, he didn't remove it.
It seemed relieved. Some things work very hard
to leave the ground. Somewhere an infant
called out, sharply,

was comforted into silence. The deep note of an owl opened a tunnel
in the air. He was growing tired. He didn’t want to stop.
The world opened.
A line began.

It traveled out ahead of him and returned, tracing a wave,
white foam gathering, gathering the moonlight,
black water rising into a wall
and he held up his hand:

the wall froze, trembling, the head of a seal
poked through, looked around, withdrew,
he liked the way its whiskers
bent forward

as it withdrew and he liked the way his hand had stopped a wave
so he thanked his hand and moved on,
into the outskirts, the taste
of salt on his tongue,

the taste of brine, it made him thirsty although he had no thirst.
This was the time of his seeing. This was the time.
And the skeletal shadow of a radio tower
loomed to the right of him,

creaking, a red gleam, then nothing, he thought he heard music
passing through him and he was right:
he was humming something
from a song,

but he couldn't remember the words, which was fine,
they were sentimental anyway so he
thanked the radio tower
and kept moving,

the road turning to gravel, the gravel turning to dust,
the ditches sang with frogs, the ditches were silent,
a pair of yellow eyes waited for him
to pass and so he passed,

calmly, since the beetle was with him, trying to refold its wings,
and the tree was with him, unfolding its leaves,
and a man was with him, walking at his side
—he didn't need to ask

who he was, so he didn't, but in the corner of his eye
he caught a glimpse: he seemed familiar,
he looked like him
and he was,

although a string of numbers was carved into his side.
He asked if he could touch them and he said Yes,
touch them. They were cold numbers.
They were pearls.

He asked if he could kiss him and he said Yes, kiss me, and so he did.
It was a strange kiss. It was a beautiful kiss.
It seemed to last a long time.
It seemed to last a lifetime.

-Christian Hawkey

Day 9 - I Am Not Done With My Changes

The Layers

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

-Stanley Kunitz

Day 8 - Every Morning a New Arrival

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-Rumi

Day 7 - Something Like A Prayer

Admonitions To A Special Person

Watch out for power,
for its avalanche can bury you,
snow, snow, snow, smothering your mountain.

Watch out for hate,
it can open its mouth and you'll fling yourself out
to eat off your leg, an instant leper.

Watch out for friends,
because when you betray them,
as you will,
they will bury their heads in the toilet
and flush themselves away.

Watch out for intellect,
because it knows so much it knows nothing
and leaves you hanging upside down,
mouthing knowledge as your heart
falls out of your mouth.

Watch out for games, the actor's part,
the speech planned, known, given,
for they will give you away
and you will stand like a naked little boy,
pissing on your own child-bed.

Watch out for love
(unless it is true,
and every part of you says yes including the toes),
it will wrap you up like a mummy,
and your scream won't be heard
and none of your running will end.

Love? Be it man. Be it woman.
It must be a wave you want to glide in on,
give your body to it, give your laugh to it,
give, when the gravelly sand takes you,
your tears to the land. To love another is something
like prayer and can't be planned, you just fall
into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.

Special person,
if I were you I'd pay no attention
to admonitions from me,
made somewhat out of your words
and somewhat out of mine.
A collaboration.
I do not believe a word I have said,
except some, except I think of you like a young tree
with pasted-on leaves and know you'll root
and the real green thing will come.

Let go. Let go.
Oh special person,
possible leaves,
this typewriter likes you on the way to them,
but wants to break crystal glasses
in celebration,
for you,
when the dark crust is thrown off
and you float all around
like a happened balloon.

-Anne Sexton

Day 6 - Are You Breathing Just A Little?

Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey, hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning, feel like?

Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?

Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over
the dark acorn of your heart!

No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!

Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself
continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?

Well, there is time left --
fields everywhere invite you into them.

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!

To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is
the mystery, which is death as well as life, and
not be afraid!

To set one's foot in the door of death, and be overcome
with amazement!

To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,
nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the
present hour,
to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,
to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened

in the night

To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

While the soul, after all, is only a window,

and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.

Only last week I went out among the thorns and said
to the wild roses:
deny me not,
but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe

I even heard a curl or tow of music, damp and rouge red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.

For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!

A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next
is coming with its own heave and grace.

Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?

And I would touch the faces of the daisies,
and I would bow down
to think about it.

That was then, which hasn't ended yet.

Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.

I climb, I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home.

-Mary Oliver

"Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives." This line resonates such truth; we seem so interested in other people's lives, captivated even. We peer into the grocery basket ahead of ours to see what that person and their family will be eating for dinner that evening, gaze out of our bay windows as we do the dishes to see what our neighbors are up to, we even tilt our heads at the coffee shop to see the cover of the book that man is reading by the window. In theory, someone else is doing just the same, straining to get a better look into our lives, yet we fail to see the fascination because it is our own.

There is a scene in "You've Got Mail" where Kathleen is evaluating her life and trying to find the seemingly hidden meaning and she says, "I lead a small life, valuable but small, and I wonder if I do it because I want to, or because I haven't been brave. So much of my life reminds me of something I read in a book once but shouldn't it be the other way around?"


Most of us feel that we lead small lives, and that other people lead grand, extraordinary lives when in reality, they lead lives quite similar to that of our own. As an outside person peering into my life, or as a medical examiner performing a life autopsy, if you will, I would see a 30-year old woman who is married with a precious newborn baby and a spunky 12-year old boy. Although she currently lives apart from her spouse they are experiencing [what I, the outsider, deem as] the excitement of house hunting to become first-time home owners. She has recently left her job to become a stay-at-home mom [a dream for a lot of working moms] and in her spare time enjoys reading, writing, and designing jewelry [how creative!] for her Etsy shop. She is blessed with having some truly amazing people in her life! She is at the tail end of her Master's degree in teaching and upon completion she will begin teaching secondary English in the fall of 2012. She has SO much going for her. What a lucky young woman! She's in the prime of her life where everything is coming together! Reading back over this, I would think exactly that of another woman in my position. Why is it that we constantly fail to see the accomplishments and blessings in our own lives?

The next time you find yourself--and by yourself I also mean myself--peering into your neighbor's grocery basket in the check out line, take a moment to instead peer into your own grocery basket and perform a quick life autopsy on yourself. Then thank God for all of the blessings you have in your own life and that while you may still enjoy admiring that other person's life, you will be grateful to have yours, and yours alone.

Day 5 - The One Line Written Inside You

The Journey

Above the mountains
the Geese turn into
the light again
Painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.
Sometimes everything
has to be
inscribed across
the heavens
so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.
Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that
small, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.
Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out
someone has written
something new
in the ashes
of your life.
You are not leaving
You are arriving.

-David Whyte

Day 4 - Feel The Future Dissolve in a Moment

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it until your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

-Naomi Shihab Nye

The hubs and I have both been pretty frustrated with our current situation, him working almost two hours away which keeps us living apart for the time being with the exception of one or two days during the week when he's off. The frustration on my end has turned into this festering anger that simmers inside of me, eating away, which I hate, but can't seem to help these days. In turn, I lash out at him quite a bit, something that I'm really trying to work on. Joyce Meyer, an evangelist primarily for women, always says in her audio sets that you must do certain things, even if you don't want to or feel like it if you're desire is to truly change. For example, she says you have to "[fill in the blank] on purpose," in this case for me the blank would be filled with love, or perhaps be kind, in relation to the hubs. I toyed with my thoughts on this mini-blog this morning about whether or not I wanted to "dedicate" it to him and I came to the conclusion that if I don't adhere to Joyce's advice to do certain things on purpose, the anger is going to take full possession of me and I'd prefer to be rid of it as quickly as possible.


So, I was looking at my orchids this morning, the ones the hubs got me the day I was released from the hospital after having Wyatt--yes, I've managed to keep them alive this long--and I started thinking about all the thoughtful things he does for me. Those sweet, small things that most women only dream for their husbands to do, mine does on a regular basis. I'm very lucky and I don't tell or show him enough how much I sincerely appreciate him and love him. ♥


Were they ever a good match?
These two.
After all, they spoke two entirely different languages, if you know what I mean.
Hootie and the Blowfish said it best, they "come from different worlds."
Did they ever just stop and say,
"I can't understand a word you're saying.
A-gah-gah-gah-gah-gah!"

Day 3 - The Second Half of My Life

Crossroads

The second half of my life will be black

to the white rind of the old and fading moon.

The second half of my life will be water

over the cracked floor of these desert years.

I will land on my feet this time,

knowing at least two languages and who

my friends are. I will dress for the

occasion, and my hair shall be

whatever color I please.

Everyone will go on celebrating the old

birthday, counting the years as usual,

but I will count myself new from this

inception, this imprint of my own desire.


The second half of my life will be swift,

past leaning fenceposts, a gravel shoulder,

asphalt tickets, the beckon of open road.

The second half of my life will be wide-eyed,

fingers shifting through fine sands,

arms loose at my sides, wandering feet.

There will be new dreams every night,

and the drapes will never be closed.

I will toss my string of keys into a deep

well and old letters into the grate.


The second half of my life will be ice

breaking up on the river, rain

soaking the fields, a hand

held out, a fire,

and smoke going

upward, always up.


-Joyce Sutphen

To be fair, I think we should consider dividing our lives into thirds, after all the innocence of our childhood and the ignorance of our adolescence prevents us from really being able to live in the first third of our lives, although to live as a carefree child sounds like perfect living to me. We must climb the steep and dangerous rocks of our twenties before we can really evaluate what life means to us and what we want our life to mean to others. So, perhaps in serious consideration of this poem, a better and more applicable repetitive line would be "the last two thirds of my life." But I don't guess that has quite the same poetic ring to it. :)

Day 2 - We Create Without Turning

The Apple Tree

I remember this tree,
its white flowers all unfallen.
It’s the fall, the unfallen apples
hold their brightness
a little longer into the blue air, hold the dream
they can be brighter.

We create without turning,
without looking back, without ever
really knowing we create.
Having tasted
the first flower of the first spring
we go on,
we don’t turn again
until we touch the last flower of that last spring.

And that day, fondling
each grain one more time, like the overturned hourglass,
we die
of the return-streaming of everything we have lived.

When the fall apple rolls
into the grass, the apple worm
stops, then goes
all the way through and looks out
at the creation unopposed, the world
made entirely of lovers.

Or else there is no such thing as memory,
or else there is only the empty branches,

only the blossoms upon them,
only the apples,
that still grow full,
that still fail into brightness,
that still invent past their own decay the dream
they can be brighter,
that still
that still

The one who holds still and looks out,
alone
of all of us, that one may die mostly of happiness.

-Galway Kinnell

Day 1 - This Is What Life Does

Starfish

This is what life does. It lets you walk up to
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a
stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have
your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman
down beside you at the counter who says, Last night,
the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,
is this a message, finally, or just another day?

Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the
pond, where whole generations of biological
processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds
speak to you of the natural world: they whisper,
they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old
enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?
There is movement beneath the water, but it
may be nothing. There may be nothing going on.

And then life suggests that you remember the
years you ran around, the years you developed
a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,
owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are
genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have
become. And then life lets you go home to think
about all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.

Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
who never had any conditions, the one who waited
you out. This is life’s way of letting you know that
you are lucky. (It won’t give you smart or brave,
so you’ll have to settle for lucky.) Because you
were born at a good time. Because you were able
to listen when people spoke to you. Because you
stopped when you should have and started again.

So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your
late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And
then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland,
while outside, the starfish drift through the channel,
with smiles on their starry faces as they head
out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.

-Eleanor Lerman

No Matter What...

This was a sign posted on a broken tree among the aftermath of one of the tornadoes that hit a local county Saturday evening. Homes were lost, people were injured, the damage is devastating, but the one thing that a tornado can't take from these people--or anyone for that matter--is their faith.

"No matter what, trust God." This is something that I have been diligently trying to work on in my own life, trusting God. Having taken a huge leap of faith and quitting my job shortly after the baby was born, I have been facing fears that things may not work out, fears of having to rely on the hubs when I've never relied on anyone my entire life. The security of knowing that I will be taken care of because I take care of myself has vanished. My peace of mind has always been determined by my sense of security and I'm currently struggling to maintain my peace of mind without it. I am trying to rebuild my relationship with God. I have finally arrived at a point where I have accepted that I am not perfect and that I have a long way to go to be in the place I need to be but I am taking baby steps to arrive there. I have been praying for the ability to trust Him rather than scramble around frantically trying to mend the things of my life or to always have a solution readily available rather than relying on Him to take care of things, to show me which path to take, to trust. A few days after leaving my job my car left my baby and I broken down on the side of the road. My first thought was that it was a sign that I had made the wrong decision leaving work and then that thought was crowded out by one a bit louder telling me, or perhaps God has created an opportunity for you to trust Him. I decided not to act on the reply to give him a call, a response to the email I had sent to my boss inquiring about the possibility of coming back. Though a constant struggle, I decided to trust.

Recently, I have been finding acute inspiration from various poems that I have come across. Getting back to my 37 Days project compilation that I abandoned shortly after the new year, I decided to create my own 37 Days project and post these inspirational poems here on my blog for the next 37 days. Even if I am unable to post personal blogs, I will remain committed to these poems in hopes of, if for no one else, uplifting myself, offering hope, instilling peace.

I'll begin with this motivational quote I found on a bottle of body wash, no doubt. The company Philosophy is all about luxurious and scrumptious bath and body products, each bottle containing a fun and feel-good quote, shampoo for the body and soul, if you will. This one I found particularly inspiring. It's called Shear Splendor, and splendor it is; the bottle reads:

we dream of the perfect life, perfect health, the perfect relationship, even perfect hair. in doing so we lost sight of the most perfect thing there is. we call it the perfect plan. it is the invisible energy life force that directs our every move, every triumph and every set back. it is the master plan that requires no perfection. once you surrender to it you genuinely see the perfection that is God's plan.

Welcome

After 9 long months, Wyatt Alexander finally made his way into the world on March 15th, 2011 at 9:56pm weighing in at 7lbs. 12oz. and 20 inches long.

The journey for him was a slow one. I entered the hospital around 5:30am at 3 centimeters dialated and the doctor broke my water at 7am. Twelve hours later, I was only a centimeter further dialated than I had been that morning. Plans were in the making that a C-section may be in order as the doctor started thinking that perhaps my pelvis was too small to pass the baby's head. She did another exam and manipulated his head a little bit and within an hour I was dialated the remaining 6 centimeters and ready to push. Twenty minutes later, Wyatt's tiny head emerged with the umbilical cord doubly wrapped around it. The doctor was able to quickly cut it away and attribute it to the reason he had been so slow to descend. Thankfully, aside from causing him to rock the labor casbah a little slower than expected, no permanent damage occurred.


He is absolute perfection.

Creaks

At nine months pregnant, I am still trying to arrive at a place in my mind where it is acceptable and even encouraged that some days I do nothing. Nothing typically consists of reading, tinkering about online, catching up on digitally streamed episodes of television shows I no longer watch for my loathing of the actual television set, perhaps a delicious afternoon nap. I have learned in my preference for silence, aside from ticking clocks, organic sounds that permeate the house walls from outdoors and the intermittent bleep of my cell phone, that this house creaks. The house is specific with its creaks saving most of them for the evening hours as the silence becomes muffled by the fading sun, particularly down the hallway. Numerous occasions have found my dog and I casting glances towards the hall in search of the entity causing the creaks, how they mimic footsteps. Our eyes'searches always turn up only the quick shadows of black and white photo's lining the long wall, silver and matte black photo frames of varying sizes and shapes. The silence and creaks, thought to reassure one that soaking in a lazy river of nothingness is acceptable at nine months pregnant, only validates my guilt. Things have been done. Over the past few weeks I have cleaned out and reorganized my pantry, begun painting the nursery, taken photo's, listed auctions, and shipped numerous packages, not to mention designed, photographed, and listed jewelry all in the name of extra income. I have hung up clothes that have remained in piles at the foot of my bed or dangling from an abandoned eliptical machine propped behind the door that I have also listed for sale. I have read several books, blogged recently, washed baby clothes until I was completely intoxicated with the delicately fresh scent of the bundle of joy floating around in my swollen belly that I am soon to meet. Despite all of that, the guilt of doing nothing festers in the small, dark corners of my stomach not already occupied by the baby. I am still trying to learn how to breathe which is difficult to do when you're suffocating.

Smudges of Waterproof Mascara

It is the memories and images that randomly come to mind that make it so hard to forget. The telephone call where I found myself out of character, vulnerable as I tearfully pleaded for him not to do what he was about to do which, in turn, elicited his own tearful response that he had to go. It was too much for him to bear, this was left unsaid, a given. The desperate and lonely bathing sessions, crying until it felt impossible that another tear could fall before it started up all over again. Trying to gain my composure, defeated by what was out of my hands, mindlessly staring at the sudsy water, which I could see clearly even through the tears, smudges of waterproof mascara, unlike my inability to see this coming. The feelings of being abandoned, the emptiness, the only relationship I could honestly describe as amazing, over without warning. Blind-sided. The songs that incessantly played their melancholy over the airwaves at all the wrong times while explaining exactly how I was feeling, reminders. "It's a quarter after one and I'm all alone and I need you now," lyrics that still bittersweetly sting me. Text messages, misleading but with drops of hope, that he missed me paired with the instantaneous thought that he was laying beside her, skin to skin, as he quickly punched the words into his phone. It didn't prove to be enough to turn photo frames over, they stared back at me when I lay in bed bragging that they encompassed everything that I loved. I packed them away along with everything else that refreshed my memory, as if the fragrance of them could be stifled by the stench of moth balls, forgotten if removed from sight. Aside from my broken-heart, my spirit had taken the brunt of the damage. Perhaps outside of the hurt that still resides in me most of my resentment is internalized for temporarily forgetting that he was human, thinking he would never hurt me like this. Trusting. I knew better. I allowed myself to get hurt. Just once though, I wanted to be the chosen one, the one so deeply loved that hurting me would be unfathomable. Perhaps I romanticize the capabilities of mankind, or rather their incapabilities. It is possible the books that I so often lose myself in have instead caused me to lose myself to the thought that true love exists...not the diluted euphoric love that eventually wears off after the honeymoon, but genuine love. The ultimate fact is that this broken spirit is simply harboring the paralyzing fear that it just wasn't meant for me.

Inverted Close-Ups

Walking out the door to go to work, I saw it. A cardinal. But not just any cardinal, THE cardinal I have been trying to photograph all month. I eagerly threw my front door back open and raced to get my camera to snap a quick pic before I left. Only when I pushed the "close-up" feature I forgot to verbally explain to my dimwitted camera that the focus was to be on the bird and not the barren tree it was perched in. Fail.


Despite my disappointment with this shot, I still begrudgingly added it among my 2011 collection of “A Year In Pictures” that I religiously post to everyday on Facebook. After all, it is a great picture of a winter tree. Perhaps with the fuzzy crimson bird in the background one might consider this photo artistic.

While this is not how I intended to practice my first day of incorporating art into mundane daily activities, I thought it would nestle in quite nicely among the idea. At the furniture store, part of my job is managing customer care, ie: damages, replacements, etc. My primary form of organization consists of colorful post-it notes that have reminders, usually written in an aromatic black Sharpie, of what needs to be done next with each claim. Tuesday, I took to work with me a deep fuchsia Sharpie from home to make my notes with. My moods are affected by color; the interior of my house is painted a variety of colors and my wardrobe screams of a jewel-toned rainbow. I thought this would be an appropriate way to insert art into my regular routine, and I believe that it made my day at work just a little brighter. The following day included making and consuming a vibrantly colorful dinner, both visually appealing and delicious.



One of my 37 days included incorporating a new jewelry creation into my everyday morning routine of typical Facebooking and blogging while drinking coffee. The results were very exciting and since that day I have made a new creation everyday since this challenge doesn't specify against one consistant art form. The results are exciting, they offer me a slightly new perspective on things, although I admit I still have quite a long way to go.

Yes...

I love that God is a “she” in this poem.

My “Life As A Verb” 37-day challenge is encouraging me to feverishly and freely use the word “yes.” I’m inclined to share the following passage, verbatim:

I was saying a big yes to my life—to all of it, the zinnias in the sun and the syrup on the floor.

It is “stuff” that keeps us from participating fully, from saying yes. Our mobility and sense of fun and playfulness and ability to be directly engaged are muted by our concern for objects, our holding on to. We cherish our objects and we are hampered by them as well, unable to move freely around in the world and engage directly for fear of leaving or losing our coffee cup and 8x11 faux leather legal-pad holder with our initials stamped in the lower right corner in faux gold. No, we say, we’ll just sit right here with our faux things. Objects distance us from ourselves, from others, from life. Things keep us from saying yes. So, too, do other people. And don’t forget us. We most often keep ourselves from saying yes.

Engage with intensity. Say yes. And dance more.

I agree with the author and immediately have the urge to clean out my closets, photo boxes, pantry, and all of the other “junk drawers” disguised as larger storage spaces in my home in the name of simplicity, of letting go.

37-Day Do It Now Challenge:

Each day for the next 37 days, find at least one way to incorporate artfulness into your life. For example, make paying bills an art exercise. Each time you send a letter or bill, decorate the envelope with a drawing or picture cut from a magazine—make are of it. Include inside the bill payment a small card with an inspirational quote. Create goofy caricatures of each family member that you can use as kind of a shorthand when you write notes to one another. Arrange your vegetables on your place in concentric circles, not just a pile and create smiley faces out of fruit in the mornings. Life is art.

I plan to force myself to embrace this challenge out of obligation and intrigue, this could get really interesting, perhaps invoking the organic creativity my soul produces yet has stifled for so long due to external circumstance. In this small, somewhat trivial task, I sense the faint and mysterious aroma of hope. Day 1.

Versatility

When we were in Sea World during Christmas of 2009, to say that Shamu splashed us pretty good would have been an understatement. Because Ryleigh's pants got so wet, they refused to stay up. To keep her pants on, I took my jute belt off and put it on her, only after wrapping it around her about 6 times. Yesterday morning Ryleigh apparently found Dinky's collar laying in the bay window and put it on. It was a perfect fit. I couldn't believe that her 5-year old waist was the exact size of my dog's neck, which has actually gotten a little smaller over the years as he ascends the dog-year ladder. I guess we know where to find her belts from now on, Pet Smart.




I was randomly thinking the other day that water has to be the most powerful “thing” in the entire world. It has the power to clean but it's also the destroyer of many things it comes in contact with, fire, paper, electronics, people, and the ladder also makes it fatal all the while a life source for underwater animals and fish. It is relaxation therapy with the sound of its crashing waves topping the chart of every sound machine available on the market and its soothing abilities as a hot bath releasing tension from achy muscles or the stress of a hard day at work or an icy blast of relief in a pool on a dog-day of summer. Water, in moderation, plays God on many levels for the necessary role it plays for plants to grow and for humans to survive. Water is rain, that which falls outside and also inside ones soul.


The hubs asked me what I wanted for Valentines Day and I couldn’t stop myself from laughing a little. He is notorious for asking about things in advance, my favorite albeit pet peeve is when he asks me what I want for dinner while or right after I have just finished breakfast. My answer usually goes something like this, “Well, I don’t know, can I eat/digest my first meal of today before thinking about my last?” I almost wanted to answer in the same manner about how I’d like to recover from Christmas before thinking about the next giving holiday, but instead I came up with something I think we both desperately need far more than sarcasm, a weekend away together. While I haven’t read of any such known power, I am hoping that the Shenandoah Valley is able to offer us, along with amazing photo opportunities, equestrian entertainment, and the quaint Olde Town colonial shopping experience of the cobble-stoned Friendship Circle, some much-needed healing and renewal.

Rain, With a Chance of Torrential Downpours

I can already confidently cross off several things on my resolution list—and sadly, it’s only January 7th. The "Positive Thinking" flew out of the window when the clock struck midnight on New Year's Eve. The “Do something new everyday” that I so eagerly lifted from my friend’s list was a crash a burn. After the first 3 days I found myself too busy and forgetting to do something new or simply not having the strength to muster the creativity to think of anything new. This New Year couldn’t have come at a more uninspiring time in my life. I even sealed last year with a reading of “The Alchemist” known to be the “book that comes along each decade that changes the lives of its readers forever,” and I was left with nothing.
No inspiration. No optimism. No sense of renewal. I do plan to give this novel another visit at a future date, but what I had hoped to gain from this book was swallowed by my present feelings of defeat. But oh, you say, this should be the best time of your life. You’ve recently gotten married and now have a bundle of joy on the way, and you’re right, one would think that this would be one of the pivotal highlights of my life, and yet, there are so many other burdens clouding this vision that I cannot see past the rain.

Of course, to begin, there is the common third trimester agitation of wanting my own body back from the discomfort of not being able to lean forward to enjoy a meal without my stomach getting in the way, the hip pain that comes from the daily regimen of sleep, the back pain due to the asymmetry of my protruding stomach, and the constant urge to release my bladder.

To compound this problem I have been having routine biopsies done on a batch of pre-cancerous cells that plagued my body early last year. I had an initial surgery to remove them hoping that would take care of the problem but soon after I found out that I was pregnant, before I hit my 6-month check-up mark from my surgery, it was discovered that the cells had returned, and better yet, more aggressively. The cells that have invaded me run on a scale from 1-5. 1 being considered “abnormal,” then there is 2,3, and 4, and finally 5, which is cancer. Last year, these cells were at a solid 2 and since then they have increased to level 3, a mere level away from cancer. The good news is that the baby is now big enough where if my results from yesterdays biopsy prove to be cancerous, he is at what is considered a healthy weight and size to easily survive living outside of the womb with proper medical attention, should they need to take him in order to get me started on immediate treatment. Should all go well and the cells remain under control at a steady level 3 or even 4, then I will simply have another surgery to remove them after we are introduced to Wyatt for the first time. In the meantime, what this means for me is numerous biopsies which get more and more painful the further I am along, as well as the sheer torture of waiting for the results of how these cells are progressing.

I’m in agreement on your thought about my having just gotten married, although I certainly don’t feel married. My husband’s current job has him working and living over an hour away from me, which may not seem like much, but between both of our jobs and each of out children, the time we have available to actually travel those few miles to spend time with one another is limited to about one day per week.
I spend most nights with the sound of the ticking clock in my living room and my dog, my nose glued to the pages of whatever book I have available for my mind to temporarily escape the loneliness that eats me up inside. Gives whole new meaning to my blog title of "The Lone Reed" doesn't it? I feel, even though technically speaking I am not, that I am going through yet another pregnancy, alone. The lack of time spent with my husband has taken a severely negative toll on me and to make matters worse because of our physical distance we have become spiritually distant from one another as well and spend many conversations in argument about the most trivial of things, yet when we're together what becomes painfully obvious is just how desperately we miss each other.

These past few difficult months have reflected on my graduate school work and I ended up with my first “C” in the one class that my fall schedule had dwindled down to after dropping a few others that I simply couldn’t handle with everything else going on. The graduate program at my University holds that any student who receives a grade lower than a “B” must be reviewed for continuance, meaning the panel could decide that I am not a suitable match for their graduate program and dismiss me altogether, and along with that, my career goals, all of my hard work up to this point, not to mention any and all student loans that I have financially accrued. The continuance hearing is supposed to take place this month.

This is honestly, just to name a few of the things that are constantly running through my mind. I could add to this list several others that include but are not limited to finances, anxiety over the new baby, and dissatisfaction with my employment, again, just to name a few, but what is the use. To see all of this laid out in black and white just enhances the depression that has already started to wash over me. Perhaps rather than crossing off “Thinking Positive” from my resolution list, I should cross everything else off and solely work towards this goal in hopes that a little change in thinking might help me make sense of all of this. Then again, maybe not.

Auld Lang Syne

So here it is, 2011. My blogging inconsistencies find me forced to briefly catch you up again. I’ve currently been cooking Wyatt now for 29 weeks and he’s pretty much outgrown all fruit references, although I’m sure if we think hard we can come up with something for his present size—perhaps a cantaloupe? It’s January 4th and I’m starting to become a bit paranoid that his due date is literally just around the corner. I have the urge to start buying some essentials just in case he decides to revisit the road Caleb took and surprise us with an early delivery.

On another note, my friend and I spent New Year’s Eve dining in Heaven, otherwise known as Panera Bread where we began our lists of resolutions. We are planning to frame them and although she is sticking to the timeless tradition of trying to accomplish each of her goals, I’m planning to frame mine without glass so that I can cross each resolution off throughout the year as I break it. The fact that this goal is much more achievable, I find myself inspired by the possibilities. We closed the night out with a viewing of the film, Black Swan, and let me just tell you, this sexual-psycho drama is an absolute must-see. With a great cast, the acting is phenomenal and I love what another reviewer said about Nina’s (Portman’s character) mother being the “creepiest on-screen mother since Sissy Spacek’s performance in Carrie.”
The music is haunting and the film, in general, effectively portrays the psychological mayhem that is the disturbing world of ballet from eating disorders, the ignorance of physical pain and injury, and dancer rivalry’s all in the name of perfection and competition, to the reality of a very short-lived career that can end without a moment’s notice for various reasons including age, weight, injury, or a ballerina’s worst nightmare, a more talented dancer. To give this film a one-worded review would be easy, brilliant. Don’t walk—run to the theater to see this.

The same friend with whom I spent New Year’s Eve with gave me a book for Christmas titled “Life is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally.” I began flipping through this book yesterday and read the introduction. The author wrote this book after her uncle had been diagnosed with lung cancer and given 37 days to live. The poignant and profound experience she had “helping her uncle live and die” prompted her to begin living each day as though she had 37 days to live.
She stands firm with this number, aside from sentimental reasons, because she states that this is just a brief enough time for people to truly want to act on their lives and not long enough to allow them to forget that they are “dying.” The entire book is a challenge, complete with inspirational quotes, writing assignments, reading samples, etc. to shake people out of their ordinary and mundane lives. I have accepted this challenge and will keep you posted on my progress, posting any writing challenges, and/or reflections here.

In addition, my lengthy resolution list includes an idea that I stole—like a pirate—from Tiffany, my New Year’s Eve date, to do something new everyday. Of course, I decided to adopt this resolution as my own on January 2nd and although I’ve wracked my brain, I can’t think of anything new that I did on the 1st. So I started this resolution on the 2nd, but it’s all semantics anyways. I made steamed shrimp for dinner for the first time on January 2nd and found it to be so easy, quick, and delicious that I made it again for lunch on the 3rd. On January 3rd, I created a 2011 Movie Theater Listmania on Amazon to track and review the films that I plan to watch throughout the year. So far, so good on at least this resolution, but we’ll see how it goes.

For your viewing pleasure, My 2011 Movie Theater Listmania:
http://www.amazon.com/lm/R3HKTPADR0BR3D/ref=cm_rna_own_lm